Month: February 2015

From a director friend, received today: “Here’s a distinction between Michael Keaton and his Best Actor rivals. Keaton is the only one of the nominees whose performance we know for sure wasn’t shaped by a director or an editor in post-production. What you see is what you get from him and only him. I can’t begin to tell you how many times we’ve had to save actors from themselves in the editing room — choosing this line from that take and that line from this take, this look from this shot and that look from another.

“Every director has his or her stories, I assure you. Within our ranks we know there are several Oscar-nominated and even Oscar-winning performances that were flat-out fiascoes until eons were spent Frankensteining their acting.

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Who does cocaine? Those white lines are metaphors for any Hollywood cheap fix or shortcut you can think of, but for me they represent CG comic-book superhero theology, and the bend-over Oscar statue guy is a combination of (a) under-40 moviegoing males and (b) Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara and all the other big-studio zombies who worship at the altar of ComicCon. The sculpture, created by “street artist” Plastic Jesus, was placed at the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and La Brea Avenue Thursday morning.

The redband trailer for Kill Me Three Times blows it right away when Simon Pegg‘s victim goes “awwwhhh!” Guys who get shot in the leg or the ass or the groin go “awwwhhh!” but not guys who get drilled in the forehead…sorry. “Feels like poseur noir all the way, never achieving the darkly comic flair or freshness of style needed to sell its fatalistic twists.” — Variety‘s Justin Chang. “Squanders a talented cast, sharp visuals and spectacular locations on a grisly trail of mayhem that rarely yields much mirth.” — Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney.

I’ve been warming to the idea or hope that Thomas Vinterberg‘s Far From The Madding Crowd (Fox Searchlight, 5.1) will be more engaging or at least less trying than John Schlesinger‘s 1967 adaptation of Thomas Hardy‘s same-titled novel. The dreamy, cultured allure of Carey Mulligan‘s Bathsheba Everdene, and her three suitors — the earthy, well-muscled sheep farmer (Matthias Schoenhaerts) who probably climaxes too quickly, the somewhat rakish military man (Tom Sturridge) who’s heavenly in the sack, a giver of quaking orgasms, and the somewhat stuffy rich guy (Michael Sheen) who’s steady and reliable but who probably comes too quickly also.

A few hours ago Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone reminded that I’m “the only person in the predicting game who had Birdman at the top. His Oscar charts that he built were roundly ridiculed for being all about advocacy and not about the race. Jeff did not see a distinction between wanting something to win and it winning, [and yet] by some miracle the ‘Movie Godz’ have shined upon him and everything came into shape for the first time since Crash in 2005, when he was one of the few who predicted it to win early where everyone else had Brokeback Mountain.”

Thanks for acknowledging except I’m not in the “predicting game.” Okay, I predict stuff but HE is mainly an advocacy site. I honestly don’t even remember picking Crash to win, but maybe I did. I know that Brokeback Mountain‘s Best Picture loss felt like an awful grenade. The pre-Birdman advocacy moments I’m proudest of are (a) jumping on the The Hurt Locker bandwagon from day #1 (i.e., after seeing it in Toronto in September 2008) and (b) being an adamant Fog of War guy from the get-go.

That “Schlumpies and Dumpies” piece I posted on 2.11 is water under the bridge, but two or three days ago a producer friend offered an amusing response. The piece basically noted that “sexual attractiveness standards have evolved in favor of the notties over the past 10 or 12 years,” and that “we’re now living with a new attitude that has been partly if not largely perpetrated by the films and scenarios of producer-director Judd Apatow.” The producer recalled a 7 1/2 year-old conversation between himself and a friend after seeing Knocked Up. The friend didn’t buy the premise of Seth Rogen getting lucky with and impregnating Katherine Heigel, which my producer pal said was “kind of like watching Walter Brennan fuck Lauren Bacall.” I’m not sure that’s quite the right ’40s analogy. How about Van Heflin instead of Brennan? Heflin married to Jean Arthur…fine. But scoring with Bacall? The old studio bosses understood how this stuff worked.

Scott Feinberg‘s latest blunt-spoken Academy member — “a longtime member of the Academy’s 387-member short films and feature animation branch who has been nominated for an Oscar” — isn’t as colorful as the publicist he quoted yesterday. This new guy reminds of the type of person who (in the words of LBJ historian Ronnie Dugger) “goes through life vainly, making his dreadful moral points of condemning this or hoping for that or scratching the back of his head.” Feinberg’s publicist had more flair. She angered a lot of people but at least she expressed herself with a little pizazz and irreverence.

Short-film animated guy loves The Theory of Everything — “The only Best Pic nominee that fully works as a whole film…beautifully performed, nicely directed, about something.” And he’s totally stuck on Eddie Redmayne‘s lead performance in that film. He’s no friend of Whiplash because J.K. Simmons‘ tyrannical music instructor struck him as way over the top and beyond the bounds of possibility as an full-time employable at a reputable music school. Like yesterday’s publicist he doesn’t think Selma is all that good, and he regarded the outcry about the Academy being racists for not nominating it for more awards as “offensive — we have a two-term president who is a black woman [Cheryl Boone Isaacs] and we give out awards to black people when they deserve them, just like any other group.” The Grand Budapest Hotel is beautifully made, but its story just isn’t special.” And as for Birdman? “I didn’t get it at all…I look around and it’s doing so well and I just don’t get it.” Good God.

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I’ve failed the DMV written motorcycle test four times since last October. Last night I purchased some kind of DMV-related study-guide course for $10 bills. My main problem in passing these idiotic multiple-choice tests has been my stubborn insistence on using basic logic, which of course you can’t do. You have to check the answer that the DMV believes is the most correct, but which is not necessarily logical and is sometimes infuriating. Between posts I’m been studying this damn thing, going over the material until it seeps out of my ears. It’s a kind of torture but I have no choice. I’m living in a kind of hellish limbo, and I will continue to do so there until God or fate cuts me a break.

In the current Vanity Fair there’s an Alex Witchel article about the decades-long…well, not exactly “friendship” but mutual admiration and good-vibeyness between Sound of Music costars Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. About 12 paragraphs in Witchel includes an obligatory sum-up of Andrews’ Hollywood career, but because of the article’s softball vibe Witchel doesn’t acknowledge that Andrews enjoyed a stratospheric six-year run in the mid to late ’60s, from the high of Mary Poppins to the one-two punch of disaster of Star! and Darling Lili. Nor, curiously, does she mention a film that Andrews regards as her all-time favorite — Arthur Hiller and Paddy Chayefsky‘s The Americanization of Emily (’64), the only film in which she ducked her goody two-shoes persona by playing a wounded adult woman who actually had sex outside of wedlock.

I was also fairly staggered by a Vanity Fair decision to add an apostrophe + the letter “s” to Andrews’ name to state a possessive. I don’t care what the style book says — it looks ridiculous. It looks like you’re supposed to pronounce it “Andrewszizz.” If a person’s name ends with an “s”, conveying a possessive requires an apostrophe and that’s all.

On top of his adamant, afore-mentioned refusal to grow sideburns in the late ’60s, Don Draper also has the temerity to wear, in this teaser, a blue sport jacket with mustard-brown pants — an atrocious color combination — with his pant cuffs at least a half-inch if not an inch too high. There’s something so profoundly creepy about this guy, so rigid, so opposed to the ebb and flow of things. Not to mention the tedious alcohol problem. I’ve run into guys like Draper all my life. He also reminds me of my pre-AA father on some level. I was right next to Jon Hamm at a Boyhood Chateau Marmont party a few weeks ago, and he was momentarily approachable. But I didn’t want to uncork even a portion of these feelings so I didn’t say anything. Better that way.

The final Gurus of Gold Oscar prediction chart calls it an even Best Picture match between Birdman and Boyhood…well, just about even. The Gold Derby gang seems a little more realistic with 17 experts or 54% predicting a Birdman win vs. 12 Boyhood boosters or 39%. Eight Guru loyalists are riding those sinking Boyhood ponies to the bitter end, down to the sea in ships: Greg Ellwood, Peter Howell, Dave Karger, Mark Olsen, Nathaniel R., Sasha Stone, Anne Thompson, Susan Wloszczyna.

Grantland is offering five video chapters of amusing, sometimes sage Oscar commentary from Wesley Morris, Chris Connelly and Bill Simmons (who writes about movies…what, once a year if that?). Simmons claims that Ed Norton gives an even better Birdman performance than Michael Keaton….arguable! Topics: (a) How to Sound Smart at an Oscars Party; (b) Best Actor and Actress: What’s At Stake?; (c) Personal Favorite Performances; (d) Sports Doppelgangers and (e) Sal’s Oscar Props. (Sal is Jimmy Kimmel‘s gambling-junkie cousin.)